How Soon Is Now? by Paul Carnahan takes the familiar sci-fi premise of time travel and makes it entirely new and refreshingly human. It’s funny in places, gutting in others, and it earns your emotional reactions instead of stretching for them.
In this story, time travel is solely a backward journey, limited to the traveller’s own memories. Our protagonist, Luke, joins a group of fellow time-travelers, The Nostalgia Club, who meet in the back room of an Edinburgh pub. What follows is a beautifully crafted study of regret, grief, and whether we can ever really change who we are. Or were.
The Glasgow and Edinburgh settings come to life so vividly, and as an 80s teen myself, I regularly found myself smiling at jogged memories and longing for a trip back in time.
“…just me, mum and Mr Benn…” was a particularly firm jolt.
The Nostalgia Club’s members each carry their own quietly devastating backstory, and watching them unravel alongside Luke’s is genuinely moving. I sought out this book after loving End of a Century, and it solidified my status as a Carnahan fan.
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